Love’s Labour’s Lost

bright Apollo’s lute, strung with his hair;
And when Love speaks, the voice of all the gods
Makes heaven drowsy with the harmony.
Never durst poet touch a pen to write
Until his ink were temper’d with Love’s sighs;
O, then his lines would ravish savage ears
And plant in tyrants mild humility.
From women’s eyes this doctrine I derive:
They sparkle still the right Promethean fire;
They are the books, the arts, the academes,
That show, contain and nourish all the world:
Else none at all in ought proves excellent.
Then fools you were these women to forswear,
Or keeping what is sworn, you will prove fools.
For wisdom’s sake, a word that all men love,
Or for love’s sake, a word that loves all men,
Or for men’s sake, the authors of these women,
Or women’s sake, by whom we men are men,
Let us once lose our oaths to find ourselves,
Or else we lose ourselves to keep our oaths.
It is religion to be thus forsworn,
For charity itself fulfils the law,
And who can sever love from charity? King

Saint Cupid, then! and, soldiers, to the field!

Biron

Advance your standards, and upon them, lords;
Pell-mell, down with them! but be first advised,
In conflict that you get the sun of them.

Longaville

Now to plain-dealing; lay these glozes by:
Shall we resolve to woo these girls of France?

King

And win them too: therefore let us devise
Some entertainment for them in their tents.

Biron

First, from the park let us conduct them thither;
Then homeward every man attach the hand
Of his fair mistress: in the afternoon
We will with some strange pastime solace them,
Such as the shortness of the time can shape;
For revels, dances, masks and merry hours
Forerun fair Love, strewing her way with flowers.

King

Away, away! no time shall be omitted
That will betime, and may by us be fitted.

Biron

Allons! allons! Sow’d cockle reap’d no corn;
And justice always whirls in equal measure:
Light wenches may prove plagues to men forsworn;
If so, our copper buys no better treasure. Exeunt.

Act V

Scene I

The same.

	Enter Holofernes, Sir Nathaniel, and Dull.
Holofernes	Satis quod sufficit.
Nathaniel	I praise God for you, sir: your reasons at dinner have been sharp and sententious; pleasant without scurrility, witty without affection, audacious without impudency, learned without opinion, and strange without heresy. I did converse this quondam day with a companion of the king’s, who is intituled, nominated, or called, Don Adriano de Armado.
Holofernes	Novi hominem tanquam te: his humour is lofty, his discourse peremptory, his tongue filed, his eye ambitious, his gait majestical, and his general behaviour vain, ridiculous, and thrasonical. He is too picked, too spruce, too affected, too odd, as it were, too peregrinate, as I may call it.
Nathaniel	A most singular and choice epithet. Draws out his table-book.
Holofernes	He draweth out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument. I abhor such fanatical phantasimes, such insociable and point-devise companions; such rackers of orthography, as to speak dout, fine, when he should say doubt; det, when he should pronounce debt⁠—d, e, b, t, not d, e, t: he clepeth a calf, cauf; half, hauf; neighbour vocatur nebour; neigh abbreviated ne. This is abhominable⁠—which he would call abbominable: it insinuateth me of insanie: anne intelligis, domine? to make frantic, lunatic.
Nathaniel	Laus Deo, bene intelligo.
Holofernes	Bon, bon, fort bon, Priscian! a little scratched, ’twill serve.
Nathaniel	Videsne quis venit?
Holofernes	Video, et gaudeo.
	Enter Armado, Moth, and Costard.
Armado	Chirrah! To Moth.
Holofernes	Quare chirrah, not sirrah?
Armado	Men of peace, well encountered.
Holofernes	Most military sir, salutation.
Moth	Aside to Costard. They have been at a great feast of languages, and stolen the scraps.
Costard	O, they have lived long on the alms-basket of words. I marvel thy master hath not eaten thee for a word; for thou art not so long by the head as honorificabilitudinitatibus: thou art easier swallowed than a flap-dragon.
Moth	Peace! the peal begins.
Armado	To Holofernes. Monsieur, are you not lettered?
Moth	Yes, yes; he teaches boys the horn-book. What is a, b, spelt backward, with the horn on his head?
Holofernes	Ba, pueritia, with a horn added.
Moth	Ba, most silly sheep with a horn. You hear his learning.
Holofernes	Quis, quis, thou consonant?
Moth	The third of the five vowels, if you repeat them; or the fifth, if I.
Holofernes	I will repeat them⁠—a, e, i⁠—
Moth	The sheep: the other two concludes it⁠—o, u.
Armado	Now, by the salt wave of the Mediterraneum, a sweet touch, a quick venue of wit! snip, snap, quick and home! it rejoiceth my intellect: true wit!
Moth	Offered by a child to an old man; which is wit-old.
Holofernes	What is the figure? what is the figure?
Moth	Horns.
Holofernes	Thou disputest like an infant: go, whip thy gig.
Moth	Lend me your horn to make one, and I will whip about your infamy circum circa⁠—a gig of a cuckold’s horn.
Costard	An I had but one penny in the world, thou shouldst have it to buy gingerbread: hold, there is the very remuneration I had of thy master, thou halfpenny purse of wit, thou pigeon-egg of discretion. O, an the heavens were so pleased that thou wert but my bastard, what a joyful father wouldst thou make me! Go to; thou hast it ad dunghill, at the fingers’ ends, as they say.
Holofernes	O, I smell false Latin; dunghill for unguem.
Armado	Arts-man, preambulate, we will be singled from the barbarous. Do you not educate youth at the charge-house on the top of the mountain?
Holofernes	Or mons, the hill.
Armado	At your sweet pleasure, for the mountain.
Holofernes	I do, sans question.
Armado	Sir, it is the king’s most sweet pleasure and affection to congratulate the princess at her pavilion in the posteriors of this day, which the rude multitude call the afternoon.
Holofernes	The posterior of the day,